Jack Hawkins (born John Edward Hawkins) was born on the 14th September 1910 in
Wood Green, London, UK. Crusty, craggy British leading man he began as a child actor, studying at the Italia Court School of Acting. He made his London theatrical debut at age 12, playing the elf king in Where The Rainbow Ends. At 17, he got the lead role of St. George in the same play. At 18, he made his debut on Broadway in Journey's End. At 21, he was back in London playing a young lover in Autumn Crocus. That year he also played his first real film role in the 1931 sound version of Hitchcock's The Lodger.

During the 30s Hawkins languished for several years in secondary roles before achieving minor stardom by the end of the '30s. This was due to him taking his roles in plays more seriously than the films he made.

During the war, Hawkins was a colonel in ENSA, the British equivalent of the USO. He spent most of his military career arranging entertainment for the British forces in India...(scroll down).

Dedicated Angels one five Dvd web page with scans of the Dvd now here.

His face, cut from British stone, is to many the face of the golden age of British cinema.- PAUL PAGE

One of the actresses who came out to India was Doreen Lawrence who became his second wife after the war. Alexander Korda advised Jack to go into films and offered him a three-year contract. In his autobiography, Jack recalled:

Eight years later I was voted the number one box office draw of 1954. I was even credited with irresistible sex appeal, which is another quality I had not imagined I possessed.

He became a major movie "name" in the postwar era, often as coolly efficient military officers in such films as The Cruel Sea (1953), Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The League of Gentlemen (1961), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962, as General Allenby). He was considered an Academy Award shoe-in for his portrayal of Quintus Arrius in 1959's Ben-Hur, but the "Best Supporting Actor Oscar" went to another actor in that blockbuster, Hugh Griffith. His performance in The Cruel Sea as the captain of the Compass Rose is all the more remarkable when you realise he suffered from life long real life sea sickness!

Around this same time, Hawkins was one of four rotating stars in the J. Arthur Rank-produced TV series The Four Just Men; the other three were Vittorio de Sica, Dan Dailey and Richard Conte.

In 1966, Hawkins underwent an operation for cancer of the larynx. Though the operation cost him his voice, publicity releases indicated that Hawkins was training himself to talk again with an artificial device -- and also that he defiantly continued chain-smoking.

Hawkins remained in films until his death, but his dialogue had to be dubbed by either Charles Gray or Robert Rietti. In his next-to-last film Theatre of Blood (1973), he was effectively cast in a substantial role that required no dialogue whatsoever -- something that the viewer realizes only in retrospect.